Navteq and their parent company Nokia believe that LBS or Location Based Services are going to be a $7 billion dollar industry by 2013. This is due to an increase of mobile connected devices and their ability to receive targeted advertisements when they are near a specific location.

Navteq currently has 80 people globally in their sales force, working with mobile operators as well as smaller application developers to help sell the data that they collect about locations. They warehouse this information by deploying “data collection trucks” which have high definition cameras mounted on the rooftop and drive most all of the major cities roads . These cameras take photos and collect other data such as elevation as they drive through the streets. Company spokesman and presenter Shawn Gunn said future unknown applications will leverage this. To seed such innovation, Navteq has a location based challenge that they run annually and several augmented reality projects are frequently presented from that.